Exbury Gardens and Lepe Country Park

With its shingle beaches, wild natural habitats and clumps of pine trees, Lepe Country Park is a perfect place to begin exploring one of the remote and most beautiful stretches of the Hampshire coast. It affords superb views across the Solent to the Isle of Wight and provides an excellent vantage point to watch passing yachts and ships, in particular huge tankers making their way to the oil refinery at nearby Fawley. To the west lie silent and eerie mudflats and marshland expanses at the mouth of the Beaulieu River and the fine gardens at Exbury, the focus of this walk.

Outstanding Gardens

Exbury is a rare surviving example of an estate village and enjoys an enviable position, being peacefully situated on the edge of the New Forest and just a mile (1.6km) from the Solent coast. Pride of place in the village goes to Exbury House and its 200 acres (81ha) of landscaped woodland gardens which lie on the sheltered east bank of the beautiful Beaulieu River. The gardens were the life’s work of Lionel de Rothschild, a member of the banking family, who bought the estate in 1919. Having extended the early 19th-century house he set to work establishing one of the most outstanding rhododendron gardens in the world.

The acid-rich soil already supported fine specimens of oak, great cedars and Wellingtonias, which provided the perfect backdrop for the rhododendrons and other acid-loving plants, including azaleas, camellias and magnolias. Today, the gardens are internationally famous for rhododendrons and azaleas and over 1,200 hybrids have been created. A network of tracks enables you to explore the countless plantings, the cascades and ponds, a rose garden, heather garden and iris garden, daffodil meadow and a delightful walk along the banks of the river with views across to Bucklers Hard.

Exbury provides a feast of visual delights and you should allow at least two hours for a visit, though it is closed during winter months, apart from selected dates. Stroll through the gardens in late spring and the vibrant colours of the rhododendrons and azaleas will be mesmerising. On a warm June day, head for the rose garden to experience the amazing range and the intoxicating scent of hundreds of blooms, while high summer is the perfect time to relax in the shade of the great trees, including ancient, awe-inspiring yews, and admire the peace and beauty of Exbury. Come here in the autumn and the beautiful specimen trees will reward you with a magnificent display of purples, bronzes and mellow brown colours.

Walk west from the shore car park along the road. Keep left along the path above the foreshore, and pass the Watch House. Then, at a small white lighthouse, turn right, going up the slope to meet the lane. Turn left then, as the road curves left, go through a kissing gate on the right. Walk along the field edge then bear left through a gate and over a bridge.

Keep alongside the fence to a kissing gate and proceed straight across the field. Briefly pass beside some woodland and follow the path to a gap in the hedge near a telegraph pole. Follow the path across the next large field and into the woodland ahead. Continue through the trees, bearing right after crossing a footbridge, then right with a waymarker post to join a fenced bridleway arrowed to the left.

Pass East Hill Farm and walk along the gravelled farm track until it curves sharp left. Turn right through a gate. Bear left following the wide path between hedges, and then on entering a field follow the right-hand field edge to a T-junction. Turn left to a stile and lane.

Turn right, continue through a gate beside a cattle grid and take the footpath left through a gate (by another cattle grid) to join a track to Gatewood Farm. Bear right at the fork, walk around the farm complex, and remain on the track for 0.75 miles (1.2km) to a gate and lane. Go straight across for Exbury Gardens.

On leaving Exbury Gardens, turn right along the road, then, where the road bends left, keep ahead, signed ‘Inchmery Lane’. Continue to a waymarked path and stile on the left.

Cross the stile and walk straight across grassland into woodland, following the path right, through the trees, crossing over a plank bridge with a pond on the right. On leaving the trees, turn right along the field edge beside the woodland to a gap in the hedge near a three-way signpost. Keep the woodland edge on your right until the path bears right over a footbridge into woods. Two more footbridges lead out via a kissing gate to a lane.

Turn left, along the lane and follow it around Inchmery House then, just before the road junction, turn right beside a barrier down to the foreshore to pick up the path towards Lepe House. If the tide is out the alternative route is along the foreshore. Pass Lepe House and rejoin your outward route past The Watch House back to Lepe Country Park.